In the whirlwind of pain, the numbers from that Saturday are etched in stone: 1,194 people were murdered and killed in the Oct. 7 massacre. At least 3,300 were wounded. Some 38 children were murdered in the massacre, 20 children were orphaned from both parents. Some 251 men, women and children were kidnapped into Hamas captivity in the Gaza Strip. Some 334 IDF soldiers fell on that day, 60 police officers, 10 Shin Bet personnel.
This was the entry point of the State of Israel into the Swords of Iron War. Since then, another 426 soldiers have fallen defending the homeland. Over 20,000 have been wounded. Some 117 hostages were released alive from captivity, the vast majority in the hostage deal at the end of November 2023, and a few in military operations. Another 37 of the murdered hostages were returned to Israel for burial. Still, 101 hostages are in Hamas tunnels in Gaza.
There is no measure and no logic
Why return and recite the numbers? Because they constitute an anchor and order within what cannot be ordered and described. They try to outline a framework for grief that has no measure and no logic.
Is there anyone among us who will banish from consciousness the body count of the first days? On Saturday night it was "at least 250 dead", then 500, and within a day we passed a thousand murdered. And since then it has grown and increased. What do 1,677 people look like? Sometimes they can be described sitting in a concert hall, or filling several passenger planes, or spending time a park. The mind tries to paint the complete, living picture, but the many details thwart the attempt.
The Israeli bereaved family is no longer just a family. It is no longer a separate, fenced and sanctified sector. It is almost a nation now. It is present in countless homes, in too many towns to count.
Faces and names
They have faces and names, and their stories flood the public space in Israel every day in the past year. Not just in the media and social networks, but also on street light poles, on house fences, in train stations, in large crowds arriving with flags and signs to performances, and even on staircases at tourist sites around the world. So great is the void, and so persistent is the willingness of Israelis to fill it and tell about it.
Trauma has no introduction and no preparation. The State of Israel that preceded Oct. 7, 2023, had never corresponded with murder and loss on similar scales. The largest massacre in the history of the state's days until that dark Saturday was the 1978 coastal road massacre, and it claimed the lives of 35 Israelis. That was 46 years ago. In the Passover massacre, the largest attack in the current millennium, 30 Israelis were murdered.
The immense loss gave birth to communities of blood ties, for life and death. Nova survivors and families of the female observervation soldiers are two examples that have been etched into consciousness this year. Small or large groups of people whose paths crossed on the most terrible day in the state's history. The "comradeship" of their loved ones was not in tanks or trenches, but in captivity apartments and tunnels in Gaza, in shelters and in safe rooms, in the wormwood bushes near the party complex in Re'im. Rare and mighty moments of humanity, of grace, of compassion, of courage.
And perhaps therein lies the power of the memory of Oct. 7: in the heroism that emerged from the battlefield and spread among friends, among family members, between adults and youth, between Israelis.
Like on the way to Jerusalem
From a distance of a year, what is the fear that Oct. 7 gave birth to? It was not fear of our enemies (we could handle them, and always will). It was the fear of the change that occurred within us. The massacre and its dimensions forced a change upon every Jew and Israeli, and not in this way – with the stroke of the sword – did we want to change.
Almost immediately we understood that we would become a different people, society and state. Israel of Oct. 6 is not Israel of Oct. 8 – for worse, and for better. Reality forced a change upon us, and alongside the awakening, the shattering of conceptions and the sobering – there was also planted the fear that we would be strangers to ourselves, that we would continue to long for who we were, and for who we could have been.
This change is also expressed in the Israeli subconscious. Paths between lush lawns and modest family homes in the kibbutz will never again be free from the shadows of the murderers who roamed between them on that morning; the stunning sunrises at nature parties will always hint at the masses of young people who fled for their lives; the shelters that knew terror and heroism will forever tell the Israeli bereavement, like the armored vehicles that were scattered from 1948 on the ascent to Jerusalem.
The Israeli present
In Jewish law, from the first anniversary of a person's death, their sons and daughters are exempt from the mourning customs that applied to them. Now they are allowed to participate in joyous events, to renew themselves with clothes and to remove additional mourning customs from themselves. They extricate themselves from the past toward rehabilitation and building forward, out of the sanctity of life.
For anyone who has experienced death up close, the memorial allows a retrospective look at the loss, an opportunity to come to terms with it or to repress it. It is a day that offers mental coping with an event that happened and ended – and whose implications are present in life.
Are we already there? It seems not. Our brothers and sisters are still held captive in Gaza, our sons and daughters are still in the midst of war. But we will rise from the crisis. The Jewish people, the Israeli nation, usually do not have time to process what was, or to dwell on what is happening, because the battle for tomorrow is already in full swing.
Oct. 7 is not an event from the past. It is still the Israeli present. We will not completely extricate ourselves from it. But we will continue on from it – different, other, stronger. Better.
